Styrene is a valuable chemical, particularly as a monomer in the preparation of resinous polymers such as polystyrenes, or in the preparation of rubbery compounds such as butadiene/styrene copolymers. Increasing monomer costs, increasing demands for polymeric substances made from styrene, have pushed the search for new and economical sources of styrene.
One potential and intriguing source of styrene lies in the fact that processes such as naphtha cracking result in a mixed effluent which contains styrene as a minor component. Such streams can be separated, such as by fractional distillation, to produce a primarily C.sub.8 stream containing some styrene, along with a motley collection of diolefins, acetylenics, and the like. These unsaturates, diolefins and acetylenics, can be hydrogenated, and the resulting hydrogenated streams then can be again fractionally distilled to obtain a styrene-rich stream. All this is very fine, except that this styrene-rich stream, while a tantalizingly close source of styrene monomer, yet, heretofore, has not been subject to an economical method of getting the styrene out.